Okay I am ready for a new laptop. I have been looking at something that will be able to handle 3DS max while able to do ther things as well. I would like to keep it longer than 3 years though, so It would need to handle future design software as well. Note* I have very little patience for pc’s. I was looking for a intermediate gamers laptop, maybe a dell or alienware. The most I would like to spend is about 1700 or so.
So how are the tablet pcs? Pros, Cons? Do you have to give up something for the tablet? Weight issues.
You give up screen size, but I use a WACOM Cintiq 21" when the tablet is docked. The small 12" size makes it useful for notetaking.
I get a lot of oohs-and-ahhs when I use the pen while presenting with powerpoint and a projector. I recently moderated a brainstorm session with Engineering and sketched the concepts as we went along using a projector. Sure you can do that with whiteboards, but I was able to instantly send out the sketches to the team in a powerpoint. It’s also handy to be able to erase. The native “ink” technology built into Windows treats each stroke as a vector object, so you can erase an entire stroke with one click of the eraser.
Battery life is great too. My only complaint is the lack of an internal CD or DVD drive, but it’s a worthy compromise in my opinion.
Bottom line: I’m staying with tablets from now on!
I highly recommend a tablet-- I’ve really enjoyed using one for the past 9 months. I love the seamless ability to work with digital files-- whether I’m making notes on a photo from research, yanking a photo from the web (or wherever) and sketching over top of it in Alias Sketchbook (or whatever) or even ideating-- the completely scanner-less workflow is really nice. Also, I love using the pen when I’m away from my desk & mouse.
I however, DON’T recommend the Acer line of tablet PCs-- very buggy. I’ve heard good things about the Toshibas-- and another designer I work with is getting one shortly. We’ll see what happens…